The Civil War, James I. Robertson [good ebook reader TXT] 📗
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Morgan led an independent group of horsemen known popularly as “Kentucky Cavaliers.” He was ambushed and killed at Greenville, Tenn., in 1864.
On the other hand, Gen. Bedford Forrest and his Confederate cavalry made a series of quick attacks in Tennessee throughout March and April. Gen. John Hunt Morgan followed this with a summer foray through Kentucky, southern Indiana, and across Ohio.
Throughout the first half of 1863 Grant slowly tightened the noose around Vicksburg. Moving down the west bank of the Mississippi and crossing below Vicksburg, Grant won clear victories at Port Gibson (May 1), Raymond (May 12), Jackson (May 14), Champion’s Hill (May 16), and Big Black River (May 17). On May 18 Grant began his siege of Vicksburg itself, and for six weeks the Federals isolated Gen. John C. Pemberton and his Vicksburg defenders. Confederate soldiers inside the besieged city eventually found it necessary to eat rats, mules and grass in an effort to stay alive.
With escape hopeless, Pemberton on July 4 surrendered Vicksburg. Not only did Grant capture an entire Southern army of 30,000 men, but the mighty Mississippi, from Minnesota to the Gulf, lay in Federal hands. The North had severed Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and most of Louisiana from the Confederacy.
As Grant was accepting the surrender of Vicksburg, Gen. Rosecrans and his Federal army of 60,000 men were pushing forward in middle Tennessee. Rosecrans forced Bragg’s army of 47,000 Confederates out of Tullahoma and across the Tennessee River. The Federals slowly began to envelop the key city of Chattanooga. Bragg, in fear of being flanked, retreated into Georgia. Rosecrans seized the strategic rail center, then started in quest of Bragg’s army.
This brought on the desperate battle of Chickamauga (September 19-20). On the first day Bragg attacked but failed to break Rosecrans’s line. That night Gen. James Longstreet arrived from Lee’s army with fresh Confederate troops. Bragg renewed the attack the following morning. After several hours of intense fighting, the Confederates pierced the Federal lines. Rosecrans’s right flank, and the general himself, retreated in disorder to Chattanooga. But the Federal left held fast until darkness ended the conflict.
Confederate troops at Chickamauga tried desperately to rout the Federal army, but a determined stand by blueclad soldiers under Virginia-born George H. Thomas, the “Rock of Chickamauga,” prevented a complete collapse.
George H. Thomas.
In the two-day battle of Chickamauga, 35,000 men were killed, wounded, or captured. Bragg’s victory, while complete, became hollow when he failed to pursue the broken and beaten Federal army. The Federals were able to reorganize and prepare for a new campaign. Grant soon arrived at Chattanooga and took command of all Federal operations in the West. Bragg’s Confederates took positions on the major hills overlooking the city.
From November 23 to 25, the Federals made a series of attacks on Lookout Mountain, Orchard Knob, and Missionary Ridge. In the end, and for the first time, Southern soldiers ran in mass panic from a field. Half-starved Confederate soldiers continued their retreat all the way to Dalton, Ga. Bragg was finished as a field commander.
1863 IN THE EASTOn the night of March 8, dapper John S. Mosby and his Confederate partisan rangers attacked Fairfax Court House, Va., only a few miles from Washington. The most important item bagged at Fairfax by the Confederates was the garrison commander, Gen. Edwin Stoughton, who was captured while asleep in bed.
John S. Mosby (the hatless figure fourth from left), pictured with some of his partisan rangers. The “Gray Ghost” weighed only 125 pounds.
From April 29 until May 8, Federal cavalry under Gen. George Stoneman cut a swath of destruction through Virginia almost to Richmond itself. Yet Stoneman’s absence from the Army of the Potomac helped Lee win perhaps his greatest victory. Late in April, Gen. Joseph Hooker started southward toward Richmond with an army of 133,000 soldiers. His line of march was through a mass of thick woods and dense undergrowth known as the Wilderness. There “Stonewall” Jackson delivered a surprise flank attack at a road junction called Chancellorsville.
Intense fighting lasted three days and extended from Chancellorsville ten miles eastward to Fredericksburg. Hooker suffered 17,000 losses. Soon the defeated Federal army was limping up familiar roads toward Washington.
Over 12,800 Confederate soldiers were killed or wounded at Chancellorsville. Yet the hardest blow of all was the death of Jackson. Accidentally shot by his own men, Jackson died of complications on May 10.
Lee’s army soon started on a second invasion of the North. Four reasons prompted this thrust: (1) Southern hopes that Lee might capture an important city such as Harrisburg, Baltimore or Washington, relieve the pressure on Vicksburg in the West, and possibly effect a victorious peace; (2) the hope too that a great victory on Northern soil might cause England to offer mediation in the war; (3) the desire to transfer the war from ravaged Virginia; and (4) the need to acquire supplies for Confederate soldiers.
With his army at a peak strength of 75,000 men, Lee crossed the Potomac in mid-June. Lincoln soon replaced Hooker with a Pennsylvanian, Gen. George G. Meade. By the end of June the 90,000-man Federal army was moving northward from Maryland into Pennsylvania in search of the Confederates, who had turned southward in search of supplies. Advancing from opposite directions, these two mighty forces collided at Gettysburg, Pa.
For three days (July 1-3) Lee delivered one attack after another. The climax of the battle came on the afternoon of July 3. Gen. George Pickett’s 15,000 men charged across an open field against the center of the Federal line. Pickett’s assault failed, with 50% casualties, and the battle ended with this attack. Over 43,000 men were killed, wounded, or listed as missing at Gettysburg. The Army of the Potomac had won its first clear-cut victory. Coupled with the fall of Vicksburg on July 4, this defeat brought Southern morale to a new low.
Lee retreated to Virginia. Both armies took strong positions on opposite banks of the Rapidan River and awaited possible movements by one another. Cavalry engagements and infantry skirmishes occupied most of the remainder of that year.
George G. Meade (4th from right) and some of his officers at their winter headquarters in Virginia. Note the barrel used as a chimney for one of the winter huts.
1864In 1864 the Federal war machine moved into high gear. The two men most responsible were Abraham Lincoln, who on March 9 named U. S. Grant as supreme army commander, and Grant himself, who made immediate preparations to strangle the Confederacy.
Grant’s master plan was simple: Attack. Federal forces would attack simultaneously at all points and apply constant pressure on the ever-weakening Southern states. The Confederacy, Grant reasoned, could not withstand such a continual onslaught.
Grant went east to campaign with the Army of the Potomac. Gen. Sherman took over command of the western forces. Federal drives in both East and West would henceforth proceed from one consistent strategy. While these two generals mapped out details for their joint offensive, a third Federal force met defeat in one of the fiascos of the war. On March 14 Gen. Nathaniel Banks, 40,000 troops, and 50 ships started up the Red River. Their objectives were to gain control of Louisiana and East Texas, to counteract threats from the Emperor Maximilian in Mexico, and to seize large stores of cotton. The expedition was a failure in every respect.
To make matters worse for the North, Nathan Bedford Forrest and his Confederate horsemen stormed Fort Pillow, Tenn., on April 12 and killed most of the Negro troops garrisoned there. Sherman dispatched all available cavalry to rid the West once and for all of the elusive Forrest. The result was the June 10 battle of Brice’s Cross Roads, Miss., in which Forrest won his greatest victory.
In spite of the activities of such Confederate horsemen as Forrest, Morgan, Mosby, and Stuart, Grant and Sherman went ahead with their grand offensives. The main Confederate defenses extended from northwestern Georgia along the eastern edge of the mountains to Winchester, Va., thence southeastward across Virginia through Fredericksburg and Richmond. Early in May both Grant and Sherman struck southward. Sherman, leading over 100,000 veterans, marched toward the key city of Atlanta. Grant, with an Army of the Potomac that numbered 118,000 men, retraced Hooker’s steps through the Wilderness in a new “On to Richmond” drive.
The going proved rough and costly for both generals. Opposing Sherman were Gen. Joseph Johnston and a reorganized Army of Tennessee. Johnston realized that his 53,000 ill-equipped soldiers were no match for a stand-up fight with Sherman’s massed divisions. The Confederate commander therefore resorted to delaying actions and defensive battles while Sherman tried flanking movements and sharp probes in an effort to trap Johnston.
In the Federal siege lines around Atlanta, “Cump” Sherman (legs crossed, leaning against a Parrott gun) and his aides posed for this photograph.
By mid-July Sherman had forced Johnston into the trenches of Atlanta. On July 18 President Davis replaced Johnston with Gen. John B. Hood, who, although minus a leg and the use of an arm, had a reputation as a hard fighter. Hood quickly lived up to that reputation. On July 20, two days after assuming command, Hood attacked Sherman along Peachtree Creek. The Southerners were repulsed. Two days later Hood attacked again in East Atlanta. Again the Confederates were hurled back with heavy losses. Hood then strengthened his defenses around Atlanta, and Sherman tightened his siege.
Meanwhile, Grant in Virginia had met with a similar stalemate—and at a more terrible cost. Grant encountered no opposition as he started through the Wilderness toward Lee and Richmond. But as the Federal army crept through the tangled undergrowth, Lee’s 60,000 Confederates struck suddenly and viciously. Two days (May 5-6) of savage fighting occurred in which Grant met a bloody checkmate.
Yet Grant did not retreat as other generals before him had done. Instead he unfolded his new and radical policy of hammering at Lee while edging closer to Richmond. Grant knew that Lee could not replace his losses, for Southern manpower was all but exhausted. On the other hand, Grant could draw on the vast manpower of the north. With Grant the Civil War was to be a fight to the finish.
Bitter fighting in the “Bloody Angle” at Spotsylvania was typical of the action in the six-week Wilderness Campaign of 1864.
The Army of the Potomac pushed stubbornly toward Richmond. Lee tried desperately to block it, winning victories at Spotsylvania (May 12), North Anna (May 23), and Cold Harbor (June 3). In the last-named engagement, over 7,200 Federals fell in less than twenty minutes of fighting. While Lee contested Grant’s moves, another and makeshift Confederate force under Gen. Beauregard repelled a Federal stab (May 15-19) at Richmond and Petersburg by Gen. Benjamin Butler.
Grant recognized that he could not take Richmond by direct approach. He shifted his army around the city and moved on Petersburg, a rail junction and important link in the Confederate chain of defenses. Lee at first was unaware of Grant’s plans to attack Petersburg. But Beauregard successfully beat back the initial Federal thrusts, thus forcing Grant to begin what became a nine-month siege of Petersburg. Many probes were made of Lee’s defenses. The most spectacular of these occurred on July 30 and is known as the Battle of the Crater.
Coal miners in the 48th Pennsylvania Infantry dug a long tunnel under the Confederate earthworks. Their plan was to explode 8,000 pounds of black powder, blast a mighty gap in the Confederate defenses, and then to use the resulting confusion for a large-scale Federal attack.
The explosion and confusion came off as planned. But the Federal assault failed. Grant resumed his tight siege. In the fighting from the Wilderness to Petersburg, the Federal
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